


Robin 6.0

by ArmageddonGeneration



Series: Jon and Damian, Sitting in a Tree [7]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Robin (Comics), Super Sons (Comics)
Genre: Adult Damian Wayne, Background Character Death, Background Relationships, Batfamily Feels, Carrie Kelley is Robin, Damian Wayne Feels, Damian Wayne Needs a Hug, Damian Wayne is Robin, Damian Wayne-centric, Friendship, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Near Future, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Teen Years, Time Skips
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-19
Updated: 2019-02-04
Packaged: 2019-08-26 05:28:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16675405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArmageddonGeneration/pseuds/ArmageddonGeneration
Summary: In the year since the Justice League disappeared things have kinda gone to shit. Damian tells himself he doesn't care. He's out of the family business, has been for years now. All he has to worry about is protecting the people he loves, not the slow march of totalitarian repression taking over the world.Then an old friend comes to visit, and drags him by the scruff of the neck back down memory lane.The end of the world started with the tooth fairy.(basically charting Dami's relationship with my version of Carrie Kelley as it evolves over the years. Background Damijon and Batfam things)





	1. The Bird with the Broken Wing

Carrie Kelley turns up on Damian's doorstep wearing the Robin costume she made for Halloween when she was nine, and a backpack full of homemade batarangs.

"Hi," she gives him a lopsided grin, "I'm here about a job opening."

For maybe the third time in his life, Damian is speechless. He takes in the pixie boots, the dayglo green goggles that made her eyes look three times as big, and the hand-stitched R on her chest, facing the wrong way. Then he ushers her inside, because these days it isn't safe to linger outside in a bright costume.

Carrie takes this as invitation to skip happily down the stairs and into the basement kitchen, where Jon is making breakfast in partial undress and Zoe is slumped at the table wearing even less, still trying to wake up.

"Human," she points groggily, "we have a rogue human. Should I remove it?"

"We don't remove humans, Zoe," Jon sighs over his frying mushrooms, "Damian is human."

"Biologically, maybe," Zoe mutters darkly

"Sorry," Carrie babbles, "didn't mean to drop in on you like this. Well, technically I guess I did, but not while you were all, y'know, naked and stuff. I mean I'm a big fan, but I've never really wondered what what you looked like in your underwear. Actually, since we're here, I've got a question about Kryptonian anatomy. Is your junk the same as a human's? I'd assume so, and please don't feel you need to show me but, if it is, that's weird right? Cos Earth and Krypton are millions of lightyears apart, so the chances of their people evolving the same reproductive organs -"

Zoe whistles impressedly.

"Kid, I've got no idea who you are, but you are asking the right questions. Where'd you find this one?" she asks Damian, who follows Carrie into the kitchen in a daze.

"He didn't," Carrie answers for him, which is just as well because Damian seriously doubts his ability to compose multi-syllable words, "I found him. You. I'm applying to be the next Robin."

Jon drops his spatula.

"You what?"

"Robin," Carrie chirps.

"You are not." Damian manages, finding a chair before his legs give way.

"I'm sorry, hold up," Jon waves his retrieved spatula in the air, "do you know this girl asking about my genitals?"

"Jon, Zoe, this is Carrie Kelly," Damian says, "she's a... fan."

Carrie gives a little wave, perched on one of Jon's surfaces in her short-pants and bright yellow cape.

"Wait, is this our stalker?" Zoe scowls at Carrie with new hostility, "The one who takes photos of us for the illegal fan magazine?"

She pouts.

"Stalker is a bit harsh. I just followed you around every night and took photos of you when you weren't looking, and oh, that's basically the definition of a stalker isn't it? Kinda walked into that one. Ooh, is this alien?"

She's been distracted by Jon's makeshift spice rack (easily collapsible in case they need to run), examining a vine with orange and lilac bulbs at its tip.

"From Tamarind." Jon supplies, now busy slicing peppers and onions.

"Huh, should've guessed. The colors. Funny how their plants and their people are color coded like that. Their God must have OCD or something."

"That doesn't explain why the fuck you're here," Zoe interrupts, "or how our pet demon over here knows you. Explain, and do it quick because it's nine in the fucking morning and I am too tired for bullshit."

"Three dollars," Jon mutters into his onions.

"Fuck off, Jonno."

"Four."

Damian sighs and leans back. An ache is developing behind his left temple.

The story started seven years ago, before Damian quit being Robin, before Father had disappeared, and before Dick...

Earlier even than that, when the sight of Bruce's face didn't make Damian want to break it.

Carrie was seven years old at the time, and she'd just lost a tooth in a fistfight.

 

***

Damian is fourteen and he's already been shot six times..

At this point it's almost routine, the pain like fire as the bullet draws a line straight through his chest, a needle through a paper doll. The automatic shutdown, muscles locked, heat replaced by freezing cold.

_Fight it.._

Damian angles, flares his cape. Bullet caught him midair, twenty storeys up. Hit his side, in and out by the feel of it -

The world flickers. _Stay awake_ . Wind fades away, _keep your eyes open -_

He hits a fire escape, hard, metal to mouth, more blood. He's leaking. Up, get yourself up-

Damian heaves himself to his feet, the world sloshes about like a drunkard’s pint glass but he’s still conscious  

Then nothing.

***

When most people find injured birds, they have broken legs or wings.

Carrie's has a bullet wound.

***

Damian wakes up to sparkles and unicorns.

He pushes himself up groggily, hand going to his aching side. Fabric, tied tight around it. Damp, and the tang of iron in the air. There's a trail of red across the noxious orange carpet. His doing, no doubt. Had he been more lucid, Damian might have thought it an improvement.

He finds the energy to turn his head and almost screams. Something, monster, demon, presses up against him -

Damian throws himself back and almost passes out again. The world swims, but he can't move -

"Are you the Tooth Fairy?” a little voice asks.

Damian looks round. There, on the bed in the middle of the room, cross legged on a rainbow-print bedspread and clutching a teddy bear to her chest like a shield, is a little girl. Four years old, maybe twelve? He doesn't know, his judgement's off.

"No," he croaks, and winces as pain shoots through his chest.

The little girl stares at him over the top of her teddy bear with feline green eyes. Her hair is the same orange as her carpet. Maybe the color choice is some kind of camouflage.

"Are you sure?"

"I-" Damian coughs and falls forward on his face, "I'm not the tooth fairy," he tells the carpet, thankful Todd isn't here to hear him say it.

“Aw man,” the girl sighs, “then you probably scared the real deal off. I had a trap laid out and everything.”

“Wha-” Damian peers up at her from his position on the floor, “why would you want to capture the Tooth Fairy?”

“For scientific study. Duh. See, the state science fair is coming up, and it was either this or a baking soda volcano, so -”

“But why would you think _I_ was the..." he can't finish; he thinks if he has to say 'tooth fairy' one more time he might throw up.

"Well non-one knows what a tooth fairy looks like, do they?" the girl asks, her nose scrunching up in irritation, "it's super confusing because in movies they range from your average Tinkerbell to Dwayne Johnson-sized -"

And Damian has officially hit his limit.

"Enough," he warns the girl, trying to find the strength to rise.

She pouts and ignores him.

"Why are you scared of Mr. Snuzzles?"

Mr -?

Damian rolls onto his back and looks back at the monster that terrified him. A sugar-pink plushie unicorn gazes reproachfully back.

Damian's head thunks back onto the carpet. He thanks Allah again no-one else is with him. He'd never live it down.

"Where am I?" he asks, finally pushing himself back up. The world still tilts crazily, but he's got his breathing under control and years of pain management is kicking in.

"My room," answers the girl, still staring at him like he's an alien.

"I can see that, you whelp," Damian grimaces, taking in the glittery wallpaper, torn curtains and - Allah save him - the _My Little Pony_ posters plastering the walls, "I meant what street."

"My street," the girl says like this should be obvious, "it's got five trees, six green doors, a fire hydrant at the end and a newspaper stand on the corner -"

Damian holds up a hand for peace.

"Never mind," he snaps, "Where are your parents? Who saw to my injury?"

"My parents are out sticking it to the Man. I did your bandages."

Damian stares at the girl.

The girl stares back.

Damian looks back down at his bandage, expertly tied. It's been fashioned from her torn curtains, a repeating print of shooting stars and ringed planets stained red like some bloody nebula.

"How?" he manages.

"Well, you fell on the fire escape outside my window, and you were leaking all over Mrs Fletchley's planter boxes downstairs. Plus I didn't want to be sent to jail for murder yet, so-"

"Yet?" Damian interjects, bewildered, "Wait, no, that's not - I meant how do you know how to tie a bandage like this?"

"The internet."

"But you're about five years old! Don't people have age restrictions on this sort of thing?"

"I'm seven," the girl says crossly, "and my parents say age restrictions are just a construct of The Man."

Damian wonders if this is all some fever dream brought on by his near-death experience. He heaves himself up and staggers to the window. It's probably best to get far away from here before sending up a distress beacon.

"Wait," the little girl slides off her bed and thrusts a little drawstring bag out to Damian, "you have to take my tooth!"

"I told you I'm not the Tooth Fairy!" Damian yells, his chest twinging again, "I'm Robin!"

"Exactly! No-one at school's gonna believe a superhero came to collect my tooth. Even if you are really grumpy."

"I've just been shot -" Damian sighs and cools his forehead on the window pane, thinking of how much better Jon would be at this kind of thing. He'd say thank-you, for a start, "How did you lose the tooth anyway?"

"I was in a fight with Becky Morgan at school," the girl bares her teeth and the neat little hole in the upper right corner proudly, "She was trying to steal Travis' lunch money again."

"And did you win this fight?"

"No," the girl sighs unhappily, "Becky's gonna get more money than me, and from the real Tooth Fairy, cos she lost two teeth. It's not fair."

Damian, silently climbing out of the opened window while she's distracted, retracts his leg thoughtfully.

"You... knocked out two of her teeth?"

The girl nods. Damian looks her over again, taking in the broken glasses held together with sparkly sellotape and the bruises on her knuckles he hadn't noticed before, impressed. Shrimpy, to be sure, but even weeds like Jon could make adequate soldiers if they worked at it.

"Next time, try punching from your hips," he takes her by the elbow and demonstrates the motion, "move with your whole body. That way you hit harder."

The little girl frowns in concentration and practices the motion, tongue poking out the same way Jon's does when he's trying to be serious.

"Very good," Damian says. He decides to humor the child and pockets the little bag with her tooth nestled inside, resolving the throw it in the next available trash can.

"Wait," the girl says again as he turns to leave, "doesn't the Tooth Fairy give you something for your tooth?"

Damian growls in frustration, turns, and hurls a batarang into the far wall. It quivers there, embedded in that god-awful wallpaper.

"Well that's not very nice," the girl says, "I don't 'spose you have many friends, do you? All the other superheroes seem too nice for you."

Damian's mind flashes to Jon and his smile.

"Yes. Too good for me."

"Don't be sad," the girl says, grabbing the plushie unicorn off the floor, "here. Have Mr. Snuffles."

Damian stares at the thing. Its mane is made of rainbow streamers.

"I will not -"

"He wants to make up for scaring you," the girl says firmly, shoving the unicorn into Damian's arms, "Trust me, he helps when you're feeling lonely, and I think you need him more than I do."

And she pushes him the rest of the way out of her window, locking it behind him.

***

Usually it takes Damian twenty minutes to get from the Brewery to the Manor, but the hole in his side and the unicorn nearly bigger than he is strapped to his back slow him down. By the time he gets to his room, he's so tired he barely has time to chug some pain killers and lock the door before he collapses again and falls sound asleep.

An hour later he's woken by Alfred's knocking at the door, having tracked down his suit locator after he didn't report in. He realises he's hugging the unicorn like a body pillow.

The unicorn is stuffed hastily under the bed and Alfred is allowed in to stitch him up and chide him for not getting him to do so sooner. The quality of bandage is praised but it's source not questioned, the bloodstain now dark enough to hide the shooting stars.

Damian wakes the next morning realising he'd never learnt the girl's name.

***

The unicorn stays. Mostly because, having faced down psychopaths and demons, the thing that keeps Damian Wayne up at night is the thought of his brothers catching him trying to dispose of it. He's never had a stuffed animal before. They always seemed rather pointless when he could tame any creature he liked.

Of course he never hugged the thing, or slept with it. Most of the time it was stowed safely under his bed. But there were days when the world was being particularly uncooperative and Jon was being particularly, inexplicably kind, when Damian would take the thing out and stare at it, this relic from the kind of life he would never know, and demand answers.

The unicorn never gave him anything, of course. It just took all his most private confessions, the ones he didn't want even his pets to hear for fear they would think him weak, and sat there. Most of the time Damian ended up punching it. It was surprisingly efficient stress relief.

So the unicorn stayed, and drank up Damian's secrets, and Damian thought himself safe because he would never see it's owner again.


	2. Halloween Masks

The second time he bumps into her she's crying on someone's doorstep on Halloween night.

Damian is fifteen now and Jonathan Kent is starting to take root in his mind like a sapling soon to grow into an immovable tree. Last week Jon asked him what he wanted to do with his life besides fight the war. Trust Jon to ask questions Damian had never even considered. He said he'd like to be a cameraman for wildlife documentaries. Getting to see all the most endangered species in the world seemed worthy use of his time. Jon had smiled sadly, and shaken his head.

"I couldn't, Dami. I don't know how you would either. To do that job you can't change things, can't help the animals even when they really need it. You just have to watch. You might pretend to be a robot, but you'd be fired at the sight of the first helpless cub."

He hates it when Jon is right.

He lands silently beside her. Her costume is dismal, but it's... ambitious, if nothing else. She's going for an astronaut, a white jumpsuit printed with the NASA logo and and a cereal box on her back painted white. Her helmet is fashioned from an old mixing bowl, flecked with dried-on cake mix no amount of scrubbing would remove. Everything is streaked with color, blues and pinks and the same screaming orange he remembers from her carpet.

"Why aren't you dressed as Robin?" he demands, "And after I visited you personally! I'm insulted."

The girl jumps. She peers at him through red rimmed eyes, her face a blotchy pink

"Go away," she sniffles, waving a hand pathetically.

"Why aren't you out harassing adults with the other gremlins?"

"Because they suck," she hiccups, "just because I didn't dress up as a superhero -"

"Why didn't you?"

She peers at him like he's stupid.

"Who wants to waste time beating people up when you could visit space?"

He can't really argue with that.

"So they left you?"

"They said my costume was stupid and I'd never get to be an astronaut because… because my parents…” she starts crying again, but Damian doesn't need to hear the rest. He knows what it's like to be judged for your family's sins.

What would Jon do?

"Alright - there, there," he taps her head lightly with the tips of his fingers like she's an unexploded bomb. Really, she needs to stop crying. Surely she's expelled enough water to fill several wells by now. Were all eight year-olds this emotionally imbalanced?

"This trick or treat business," he coughs, "how exactly does it work?"

At least she stops crying. The girl wipes her eyes and stares at him.

"You've never been trick or treating?”

He shakes his head, deliberately not thinking of Jon, and the invitation for him to come out tonight sitting unanswered on his phone because he didn't want to make a fool of himself in front of someone who's opinion mattered more every day.

"Wow," the girl gives him a watery smile which Damian wishes she would keep because it's still splotchy and rather disgusting, "that's weird, because you already have really cool costume. But secret identities and stuff, I guess. Is that why you don't do Halloween? Dressing up is meant to be fun, and I guess you can't do that in a superhero costume. It'd be like me wearing my school uniform," she looks at him with something far too like understanding in her eyes for Damian's liking, "It's a weird feeling, right? Not wanting to be a superhero? They treat me like I've done something wrong -"

"Enough," Damian finds his voice, before her rambling cuts too deep. She's wrong, of course. He wants to be Robin every night, every day if he could. It's just Jon's voice in his head and Jon's text on his phone suggesting it might be fun to let go. Just for one night.

"Sorry," the girl mumbles, eyes welling up again.

"Stop!" Damian says desperately, "You can come with me tonight, just please stop crying."

She brightens immediately. "You'll come trick or treating with me?"

"If it will shut you up."

"Deal," the girl says, and they shake solemnly. "My name is -"

"No names!" Damian holds up a hand, "it will make this indignity easier to forget. Now, explain this time-honored art of Trick-or-Treating."

"Well you knock on people's doors and say ‘trick or treat’. Either they give you candy or you play a trick on them."

"Trick?"

"Yeah, throwing eggs or toilet paper. That kind of stuff."

Damian smiles so widely his cheeks ache.

"What about... smoke bombs?"

***

Unfortunately, Trick-or-Treating does not shut the girl up.

He runs his usual patrol route as he would have before, only this time on foot and with a very talkative astronaut in tow. Damian pities whoever eventually gets stuck with her up there in space. He wouldn't blame them for cutting their tethers and floating into the void just to get away. 

Incessant chatter aside, the night ... isn't unpleasant. At the first few houses the girl can barely open her mouth before Damian has swooped from above, smoke bomb already flying, screaming "TRICK!" at the top of his lungs. 

These people give them no candy.

Eventually some actual crime happens and he has to dash off and beat an idiot purse-snatcher into a wall. 

When he returns, the girl is ringed by a group of others her own age, an evil Justice League in miniature. Basic battle strategy; they've flanked her to cut off all means of escape. Their ringleader steps forward, and Damian's stomach sours as he recognises Jon's costume on an undeserving body. 

(Though, frankly, even this usurper managed to make the costume look crisper than Jon's tatty jeans). 

The usurper is saying something to her, jeering, disrespecting Jon's symbol and his heritage. Then the usurper tries to tear away the cardboard box on the girl's back. Damian expects her to start crying again.

She punches him in the jaw.

A real, full-bodied punch, moving from the hip like he'd taught her almost a year ago. The usurper drops like a brick and his cronies stare at the girl, dumbfounded. Damian leaps into action.

"Gentlemen," he says the way Pennyworth does when you haven't done your chores, and you feel the fear of God in you. The cronies feel it. They scatter like ants.

"Cool," says the girl, massaging her hand, "this time can we get some candy?"

***

Damian is ill-prepared for the rigours of trick-or-treating, so he steals the girl's mixing-bowl helmet to use to hold his candy.

They join the main flow of children down Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, and soon amass a pile of cheap store-bought confectionary. It's drivel, of course, but Damian eats it all the same. It reminds him of fairgrounds, and fairgrounds remind him of Jon.

It's odd, walking unnoticed in the middle of a crowd, lit by the warm ember glow of the jack o'lanterns lining the sidewalk, spotting flashes of the costumes he knows so well remade by the mind of a child. Batman's  _ modus operandi _ has always been to inspire fear, and so Damian strives for his father's ideals - fighting against over a decade of Robin being seen as the nice one, the kid-friendly one, because he thought it demeaning. But now? Surrounded by dozens of Nightwings and Batgirls and Red Robins pushing and joking and laughing around him? He thinks he sees what Grayson, and even Drake (Allah forbid) were working towards. 

Inspiration. So the next orphaned child didn't have to become his father.

Damian wonders what it would’ve been like to grow up in Robin's light, instead of Batman's shadow.

No-one realises who he is, but everyone adores his costume. Several people try to high five him and Damian nearly breaks their fingers.

They're passed by vertically challenged Supermen, Wonder Women, Damian counts at least twenty Flashes…

But no Batmen. Maybe it was too scary, for these children raised on bedtime stories of the Big Bad Bat punishing the wicked, to dress as the Bogeyman himself. And (Damian finds his heart sinking despite himself) there are no Robins either.

He got his wish, he supposes. He is his Father's son.

They reach the last house, finally, a full two hours later. The girl's cheeks are sticky with chocolate and Damian is ashamed to admit his probably aren't much better. Mental note that Halloween is most definitely not good for his training regime.

An old crone pushing sixty opens the door at the second ring.

"Oh my, aren't you just adorable!" she trills, "a little astronaut!" She dumps a handful of dried fruit and what looks like birdseed into the girl's bowl, "And - is that Robin?" the woman's smile wavers as she turns to Damian, "Oh, I don't know about that one, dear. Terrible example for the children. His parents should be shot, you ask me."

Damian goes rigid, but the woman doesn't seem to notice, chucking another handful of birdseed and fruit into his bowl and pinching his cheek painfully between two varnished claws, "but still, aren't you just the cutest thing? I could eat you up. Now run along!" and she shuts her door in their faces.

A beat of silence.

"You're gonna trick her, aren't you?"

Damian cracks his neck in anticipation, fingers running over his utility belt, selecting the perfect weapon.

"I recommend you take a step back."

***

Ten minutes later the GCPD receives an irate phone call from an elderly woman living on the South end of MLK Jr. Boulevard, complaining about two hoodlums, one dressed as an astronaut and one as a superhero, who have trapped her in her house by freezing the front of the building solid. Yes, Sargent, she said frozen solid. No she doesn't know how they did it, all she knows is there's a ruddy great iceberg to rival the one that sank the Titanic ruining her front lawn, so they'd better get someone down here quick before she files a complaint.

The desk Sargent sighs and started noting things down. 

Halloween in Gotham was always so much fun, he thinks bitterly.

***

"Won't she get hypothermia or something?"

"If we're lucky."

"O-kay, I'm guessing the whole friends situation hasn't gotten any better, has it?" the girl gasps excitedly, "What if you've cryogenically frozen her? I read once that -"

"Stop talking. Please," Damian begs, perched partway up a wall. The girl pouts.

"Fine. But only because you asked nicely," she gives him a toothy grin, much better than the watery smile from before. Her tooth has grown back, he notes, and her helmet is back on, jammed over her carrot colored curls, "Thank you, by the way. This was a really cool Hallowe'en."

"Well, obviously," Damian scoffs, "Any night with me in it is automatically made better by sheer osmosis. “There is one thing you could do in return, though,” he adds quietly.

"Yeah?"

"You must swear to dress as Robin next year. I expect you to spread my legend amongst the masses."

"Deal," the girl says, and they shake solemnly, Damian hanging upside-down. 

***

The next morning Grayson corners him at breakfast.

"You'll never guess what happened on Halloween," he says, with the air of an attorney ready to prosecute a guilty criminal to the fullest extent of the law.

Damian swallows hard.

"What?"

"Jason took a photo," Grayson whips out his phone, Exhibit A for the consideration of the jury. Damian feels faint. 

It's him. The photo has been taken from a distance, a rooftop several storeys up, and Damian purposely had his hood up all night, but the cut of the material and the golden thread are unmistakable.

There is a beat of terrible, breathless silence.

"Grayson, I assure you there's a perfectly reasonable explanation -"

"CONGRATULATIONS!" Grayson bellows, hooking him around the waist and spinning him around, laughing.

"I - what? Wait, put me down - Richard, unhand me at once!"

"Your first cosplayer!" Richard shouts, trapping Damian in a Fireman's lift and barreling through the Manor, "I'm so proud!"

"Proud of what - chandelier!" 

Damian ducks as Grayson bounds down the stairs two at a time and skids into the laundry room, where Pennyworth is folding shirts in his floral pink apron.

"Alfie! Damian got his first cosplayer!"

"Congratulations, Master Damian. Master Dick, please refrain from dancing on the washing machines, they are very expensive to replace."

Grayson jumps down and jogs to the sitting room, where he finally lays a fuming Damian down to rest on one of the couches.

"What," he growls, "Was that."

"Someone dressed up as you for Hallowe'en!" Richard is still jumping around like an excited puppy, "that's like, one of the biggest superhero rites of passage ever! If you're getting to the kids, it means you're doing the job right. Tim and Jason said you would never catch on with them, but I always knew you were just a late bloomer!"

"I - oh." Something cold settles in the pit of Damian's stomach, "would you excuse me," and he leaves Grayson prancing like a lunatic in the drawing room.

***

The next year the girl keeps her promise. He spots her in a crowd while Jon is dragging him along to their next house, tripping over his own high-necked cloak (Damian was coerced, he swears).

The costume isn't perfect; the R is the wrong way round and instead of a domino mask she wears goggles the same bright green as her eyes, but Damian is still grateful enough to hate himself for it, and the next morning Grayson almost has a fit. 

The briefest flash, that's all it is. Orange curls in the crowd. She's alone again, but he doesn't go up to her. Too dangerous. He's not sure how to feel about her. It seems they will constantly be in each other's debt, he and this strange little imp. One favor for another.

For the first time, he wants to know her name.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updates won't normally be this fast but I had a free stretch today.  
> What did you think? As always comments are God's gift to writers.  
> Thanks for reading!


	3. Ball's in Your Court

Damian is sixteen, it's two months after Halloween and biting cold, and he's fairly sure his father is jealous of Jonathan Kent.

The end of everything started earlier that evening, over Pennyworth's mushroom rigatoni, when Damian announced he would be spending Christmas with the Kents this year. Without Father.

Father didn't like that.

Christmas was a tempting time for Gotham's rogues, he argued over his pasta, exuding false calm. He needed all hands on deck.

Damian couldn't help but sneer. This was his first night off in eight months, the first he'd taken voluntarily in two years. Surely Father could deal with the likes of Calendar Man himself?

Father really didn't like that.

Damian's attention was divided, he argued, the veneer of calm becoming thinner and thinner. Between his semi-permanent residence at Titan's Tower and gallivanting after Jon the rest of the time -

(Really. Damian did not  _ galivant _ .)

He didn't exactly recall how it happened, but suddenly he and Father were on their feet and Titus and Alfred were watching them yell at each other across the table like a tennis match.

Pennyworth's rigatoni went cold.

Now Damian is out, trying to outrun the inevitable decision he has to make. Because Father is right, in a way. Damian has been distracted, divided, and to be an effective soldier he has to be completely focused. So he has a choice to make, again, between two sides of his life.

One wants him to conform to his Father's wishes, his Father's mission, in a way that is reminding him more and more of his Mother.

The other...

Again, the mantra circles round and round his head.Jon's voice, clear as a summer day.

_ "You're not a team player, Damian, you need to be better Damian. You're meant to lead the Teen Titans, not just order them about." _

Was that not the exact definition of leadership; giving orders? That's what Father did to him.

**...**

Damn that hick, seeing the truth in things he had no right to. The boy was insufferable. 

Still a boy, he reminded himself. Thirteen was still too young and vulnerable and definitely, categorically off limits. Even if Jon's smile was starting to mean other things, like fairy lights and a warm fireplace to fight off the empty grate at home, and chasing Titus' tail through the cornfields as the first flakes of snow began to fall.

He's hunched on a rooftop, angrily stabbing the air with a batarang and pretending it was the sickening shroud of yuletide cheer he's fighting, when a voice he recognises shouts at him from across the street.

"Hey, Robin!"

Damian looks up, then down, and there she is, clutching a basketball the exact way she once clutched a teddy-bear, shivering at the edge of the community court. His red-headed nightmare.

"Come play with us!" she shouts eagerly, like he's a puppy she's expecting to do a trick.

No, not today. He does not have time to stoop for ants.

He turns to leave, and another voice jeers,

"See? I told you guys. You're a lying little shit, Kelly. You don't know Robin!"

"Why would you even want to?" asks another, "Guy's an asshole anyway."

(And yet, sometimes one must stoop to conquer.) 

The other kids stare slack-jawed as Damian swings down and perches on the fence ringing the court.

"What is it you want?" he hisses. The girl (Kelly, the big one called her) beams.

"I was just wondering if you'd like to sub in for me. I'm pretty crap at basketball. Like, theoretically it's a piece of cake because it's just physics equations and the application of force, but my gym teacher says I overthink things, and by the time I've explained my strategies to the team someone's always stolen the -"

The big one who called her a little shit slaps the ball out of her hand and bounces it between her own legs, staring Damian down warily.

"You're not really gonna play are you?"

"And why should I not?" Damian demands.

"Well, you're kind of a loner, right?"

"You're not going to kill us, are you?" one of them pipes up. His knees are knocking.

(Damian remembers how scared Jon looked the first time they met, strapped to a table with needles and  lights and knives hanging like death threats over his head.)

He jumps down and examines Kelly's team. Pathetic, the lot of them, too short, too scrawny and too many running noses. Why does he always get the runts?

"No," he turns back to the other team, wearing the smile he’d been perfecting for when he finally wore Father’s cowl. He thinks he might keep it for himself now, "We are going to  _ destroy  _ you."

***

Team huddle, discussion of strategy.

"Tell me about the other team," he whispers, mind a whirl of devious battle plans, "weaknesses we can use against them. Any phobias we can exploit?"

"Well, um," one of them stammers, obviously still unprepared for the honor of his presence,  "Mark is kind of scared of frogs?"

Damian stares at him.

"Anything else? Physical maladies?"

"Sarah pulled her left hamstring last week," another pipes up, "she got a red card in soccer for tackling Jenny-"

"Yes yes, fascinating," Damian interrupts, mind racing, "in that case keep the ball to her left side. She won't be able to maneuver as well. Other than that, keep passing the ball to me and we will humiliate them for all time!"

“Hang on,” Kelly interjects, “this is basketball, not a gladiator fight.””

(The first and last time Grayson ever tried to involve Damian in a basketball game was a source of mixed emotions: Pride, because five minutes in he’d almost hospitalised Drake - who later insisted he hadn’t even been playing - with a well-aimed ball to the stomach. It was also a source of shame and righteous fury, because not three minutes later Todd avenged his replacement by slam-dunking Damian through his own hoop. It took Grayson twenty minutes to untangle him from the net, at which point he’d admitted defeat and sloped off to Bludhaven to sulk.)

“Is there really a difference?” Damian asks. 

The girl stares at him.

"O-kay, maybe it would be better to pass to Marvin. He's taller than you anyway, and he's got the best aim."

It's like she exists to annoy him.

_ "Be a team player, Dami," _ Jon encourages in the back of his head.

"Fine," he grinds out, "Everyone. Pass. To Marvin."

***

The final score is 38:32. Damian will relish the looks of utter shock on the other team's faces for the rest of time.

***

"Are you leaving?" 

Damian glances down at the girl (Kelly, he reminds himself) from his perch on the court fence; crooked glasses, a spray of freckles across her nose and her hands deep in the pockets of her jersey. The rest of their team scattered once Damian threatened to smoke bomb them if they assaulted him with one more _hip-hip-hooray._

“Of course,” he narrows his eyes, expecting a trap. There is no way in hell he’s going for ice creams, or something equally saccharin.

“Right,” she slurps on an acidic green lollipop in such a way that Damian wants to smack it out of her mouth, “How’s, uh, how’s the friend thing going?”

Damian thinks of his room in Titan’s Tower, which he realises with a start he’s already dubbed ‘home’.

“Better now, I think. Why?”

“No reason,” she scuffs her dirty hi-tops against the clay, “actually I’m lying, why am I lying to you? You probably have, like, a lie detector built into your skull. Well, not a lie detector, that’s a little too Robocop. I mean you could have a lie detector. Do you have a lie detector?”

“I do not have a lie detector,” Damian confirms grimly, wondering if he can knock her out with a dart.

“Cool, well, take it as a design note. Cos I was wondering, if you wanted, like, hypothetically, I could. Be your friend I mean.”

“This is to further your own self interests isn’t it?”

“Huh?”

“I saw you with them,” he jabs a thumb at the pack of preteens heading away from the court, several casting dirty looks their way, “You’re a filthy hypocrite, criticising my lack of social prowess when you yourself are friendless and alone.”

“I have friends!” Carrie protests, then mumbles into the sidewalk, “most of them just live in my head, that’s all.”

“And that is what we call a psychological disorder. Give it ten years and you’ll be threatening the city in a flamboyant costume,” Damian unclips his grapnel gun in a businesslike manner, “I look forward to meeting you in the field of battle.”

“You’re telling me you’ve never had conversations with imaginary people?” Carrie asks. Damian flashes to the unicorn she gave him, soft and cuddly and the harborer of all his darkest secrets. He thinks to before that, when he was small and he had to imagine Father into being, the shadow that the Legend of the Bat cast over him.

A beat of silence.

“If I agree to your request,” Damian says finally, “will you leave me alone?”

“Pretty sure that’s the exact opposite of what a friend is meant to do.”

“Will you at least shut up?”

“Deal,” she says solemnly, and they shake on it, just like they had a year before. Her hand is a little bigger and her gaze a little fiercer, but Damian wonders how many more times he’ll find himself here, tying himself to this girl with invisible bonds it will get harder and harder to break.

He turns and fires the grapnel, swinging up and away from the question and the girl and the odd little niche she’s carving out in his life. Titans Tower is waiting, but before that he thinks he might visit Jon. He has further questions about basketball.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi - I'm so sorry for not updating in forever, I'm a monster, I got distracted by other things, but thanks a ton for reading! (P.S comments are the best)

**Author's Note:**

> This is a different idea I've had cooking for a while - updates will be sporadic and leisurely.  
> Comments are the ichor of the Gods - I'd love to hear what you thought of this! Was Carrie OK? Did she come across as annoying (I kind of re-jigged her character a little)


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